LifeInVector has a great Adobe Illustrator Gradient Mesh tutorial available. The tutorial is a downloadable PDF/Illustrator file combo, and covers the use of the tool quite well. If you’re looking for more, check out this list of 40 great Illustrator tutorials at Smashing Magazine.

I recently had the need to use a nice clean image of a smartphone. I began searching through the numerous images found via Google and eventually came across this freely available layered Photoshop file of a BlackBerry – just what I was looking for from a user over at DeviantArt. The 6.2 MB download expands to a 15 MB PSD image containing, well, a ton of layers – allowing you to customize the heck out of it.

CreativeNerds has put together 14 very cool spiral brushes for Photoshop geeks free for download. I’m a big fan of Photoshop brushes, and this set could be extremely useful to add depth to background images and techy artwork.

ThinkDesign has 15 red vinyl textures in high-resolution available free for download. They make great backgrounds for ads, brochures or multi-media presentations. The single download is approximately 54MB.

Vectips has a quick tutorial showing you how to create gradient strokes on your type in Adobe Illustrator. This super simple technique use the Appearance panel and effects to create editable gradient strokes in Illustrator. As a bonus, you can add transparency for a very cool effect as seen above.